Why can’t you install MacOS on an Intel-based PC, but Windows can be installed on Intel-based Mac hardware?

234 views

Not including the new Apple Silicon products, why can’t you install MacOS on an Intel-based PC (like Dell/Lenovo/HP), but using Boot Camp, you can install Windows on Intel-based Macs.

In: 1

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because Apple does not permit it, but Microsoft does.

That’s really the only reason. Windows is intended to be run on hardware from lots of vendors. So as long as the hardware is considered compatible you can install it (and sometimes you can install it on incompatible hardware, lol). Functionally Microsoft simply allows windows to be installed unless it can’t be installed. In fact, Microsoft encourages people to install windows on computers.

Apple on the other hand, does not want anyone to install MacOS on anything other than a Mac computer. So Apple does a check to verify that you are installing the software on Apple built hardware. Even if you are using the exact same spec components the system won’t identify it as an apple built computer and therefore MacOS will refuse to install. Note, this has nothing at all to do with the ability for MacOS to work on the device or not. It’s only about who built the device.

Now, it’s not THAT hard to bypass, but it’s the fact that you must perform this bypass that’s the hack part of a hackintosh, and also makes it technically illegal in the US.

MacOS cannot be installed on non-Apple hardware because Apple does not want people do be able to do this. If they did want it, it would be trivially easy to do so. To the point where Apple has taken special measures to make it not work. Without those special measures, people could install MacOS on lots of PC hardware. Apple does not want this to happen, so they prevent it from happening.

And that is why you can run Windows on an Apple computer, but not MacOS on a non-Apple computer.

You are viewing 1 out of 8 answers, click here to view all answers.